Lindsay Ahlborg and Edward Schultz purchased the former Crest Craft jewelry factory in Providence’s West End in 1999, and then spent almost a decade deciding how to redevelop the building in a way that promised to return the investment.
Now Ahlborg and Schultz have made a decision – they are converting the building into a technology center.
The partners, who own the building at the corner of Westminster and Knight streets through a real estate holding company called Steeltex Inc., plan to market the Westminster Technology Center to firms that specialize in technology outsourcing, a growing trend in business worldwide.
Internet disaster recovery, data security and managed IT services have become booming fields, as companies move to store their computer systems in remote locations to prevent disruptions and guard their data against security breaches.
In particular, the technology center’s location on top of a major cable fiber alley through the city will make it ideally suited to firms that offer data backup and data security, Ahlborg said.
“One of the main things we have going for us here is we’re located right on the main fiber-optic trunk line in the city, so it’s a very desirable location,” he said.
Ahlborg and Schultz are currently redeveloping the three-story, 40,000-square-foot building to meet the needs of growing Internet technology and telecommunications firms, with IT closets featuring Hubble racks for rack-mounted servers, patch panels, routers and T1 connections. Ahlborg said he and Schultz also are considering adding a central meeting room that tenants can use for sales presentations and Web conferencing.
The building’s roof will provide more than 8,500 square feet of space for communications equipment and will include a transmission tower erected atop a 35-foot chimney, Ahlborg said.
The planned technology center already has two tenants, including HostTech Communications, a company that provides data storage and security and managed Internet services to businesses throughout the Northeast.
HostTech has operated in the building for several years, originally working to process America Online’s then-flourishing dialup Internet business. But in recent years the firm has shifted its focus to the fast-growing field of data storage and security, investing in its own dark fiber cables, fitting its 10,000-square-foot data center with a climate-and-humidity-controlled system and purchasing 18 IP address blocks.
“We chose the tech center because it’s an ideal site for our type of business,” Casmir Kolaski, HostTech’s vice president and general manager, said in a news release. “It not only provides all the technological amenities companies need, like proximity to fiber, but also all the advantages of being centrally located in the state. It’s close to the highway, within 15 minutes of Green Airport, and has free parking as well.”
Another tenant in the building, an IT and Web development firm called Ironclad Business Solutions, is currently subleasing space from HostTech but will expand into 2,500 square feet of new space once the technology center opens, Ahlborg said.
The building will be able to accommodate tenants needing space as small as 250 square feet to as large as 6,000 square feet, he said.
“We’d like to fill the building up, obviously, and we’re flexible in that,” Ahlborg said.
